Family Research Council shooting by LGBT activist ignored by media, Brady Campaign

After the frenzy of many parts of the media, the Brady Campaign to Outlaw Firearms Prevent Gun Violence, and the usual tools of the Progressive left (i.e. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who uses any excuse to introduce legislation to ban “high capacity clips” and “shoulder things that go up [1]“) to jump on the recent tragic shootings in Aurora and Wisconsin to make the case for both enhanced gun control and to expound on the supposed ‘evil’ of the TEA Party, have largely ignored the shooting today at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. [2]. As of the time of this writing, the Brady Campaign website [3] had made no mention of the shooting and Carolyn McCarthy’s official website [4] contained no reference to the shooting or to any planned emotional legislation intended to prevent such violence.

Perhaps the reason the Brady Campaign and McCarthy have ignored the shooting is simply because the guard who was shot lived to tell about it. Or, perhaps the willful ignorance is because the shooter, Floyd Corkins, was an LGBT activist and volunteer for the local DC Center for the LGBT Community and because the District of Columbia already has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, so restrictive, in fact, that the District was the subject of the now infamous D.C. v Heller case in which the Supreme Court affirmed the individual right to firearm ownership in 2008 [5].

Even ABC News, who was the first to assume and suggest (incorrectly) that the Aurora shooter was associated with the TEA Party last month [6], noted the leftist connections of this most recent shooter [7]:

Corkins was a volunteer at the DC Center for the LGBT Community, a community center in Washington for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, where the Associated Press reported the 28-year-old often worked at the front desk.

Corkins also apparently yelled something about the mission of the Family Research Council, a Christian organization founded by James Dobson, before opening fire on the security guard [8]. Corkins reportedly used a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol [8] and two 15-round magazines [9].

The fact that this seems to have been a “hate crime” carried out in response to the expressed sexual orientation/”gay rights” position of the Family Research Council is immaterial – there are nutjobs in every organization and neither the TEA Party nor the Left are immune. So, there is no sense in blaming the LGBT community for this latest shooting, just like there is no sense in blaming the TEA Party for the last one (especially since the shooter had no relation whatsoever to right-leaning activists). Instead, we should be universally blaming the shooter.

To their credit, 25 LGBT organizations issued the following statement after the shooting [10]:

We were saddened to hear news of the shooting this morning at the offices of the Family Research Council. Our hearts go out to the shooting victim, his family, and his co-workers.

The motivation and circumstances behind today’s tragedy are still unknown, but regardless of what emerges as the reason for this shooting, we utterly reject and condemn such violence. We wish for a swift and complete recovery for the victim of this terrible incident.

Good for them, and I completely agree. There is no excuse for an unprovoked shooting.

There is also no excuse for Carolyn McCarthy or the Brady Campaign to ignore this shooting – obviously, the essentially “gun free zone” of Washington, D.C. isn’t “gun free” enough. Perhaps if it were identified as a “totally gun free zone” things would have been different?

After all, it is already illegal to wander around D.C. with a concealed firearm – in fact, it is illegal to even possess a loaded firearm in public which is not locked up in a vehicle (separately from any and all ammunition [11]). Such was D.C.’s “reasonable” response to the Supreme Court overturning the district’s pistol ban. The laws are so restrictive, residents have reported that the Police have behaved as if firearms continue to be illegal in all circumstances, to the effect of enacting unlawful arrests of gun owners who have managed to comply with the letter of the law [12] (although I don’t see how that’s even possible).

The fact of the matter is that gun control laws only affect those who obey the law. Criminals will always be armed.

Michael Moore, in the spare few minutes he could muster between inhaling Big Macs and greater than 16 oz Mountain Dews, opined after the latest Aurora massacre that the problem really is with the American perspective more so than anything else – in Moore’s words [13], “Guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people.”

Unfortunately, Moore is extremely experienced in manipulating the facts for political gain [14]. Moore also expresses a deeply flawed understanding of the Second Amendment, typical of Progressives in today’s world:

The right believes that the Founding Fathers, through some sort of divine decree, have guaranteed them the absolute right to own as many guns as they desire. And they will ceaselessly remind you that a gun cannot fire itself – that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

Of course, they know they’re being intellectually dishonest (if I can use that word) when they say that about the Second Amendment because they know the men who wrote the constitution just wanted to make sure a militia could be quickly called up from amongst the farmers and merchants should the Brits decide to return and wreak some havoc.

The men who wrote the Constitution did not “just want to make sure a militia could be quickly called up from amongst the farmers and merchants should the Brits decide to return and wreak some havoc,” and to believe so is delusional (and very Progressive!). While an entire article could be written on this point alone, the brief background to the Second Amendment is that it was intended to ensure the People a last resort against tyranny. In the words of the Declaration of Independence [14a]:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security [emphasis mine].

The Second Amendment had nothing to do with hunting, security in the home (although that was a related, but secondary effect), sport shooting and/or recreation, or just to “make sure a militia could be quickly called up” to take on the Brits.

Early versions of the Second Amendment, as presented to the Congress, did not connect the right to bear arms to a militia and expressed a clear individual right to bear arms. As first presented by James Madison on June 8, 1789:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

As the Court upheld, the right was always intended to be an individual right, as it stemmed from English Law which had long affirmed the same.

In addition, the inclusion of the entire Bill of Rights was designed to provide further and explicit protections of the rights of the individual and of the States, out of fear that the shifting of authority from the States to the federal government had many who opposed the Constitution concerned. Thus, the Antifederalists were convinced to support the Constitution (to some degree) since the Bill of Rights had been promised to protect the rights with which they were primarily concerned.

Had the Founders intended to connect gun ownership with militia service, the text of the Second Amendment would have read, “The right of the militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” After all, the Founders had already expressed in previous versions of the text that the militia was “composed of the body of the people [15].”

As it reads, the right is reserved explicitly to the people, not to the militia:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Moore, unfortunately, can’t bring himself to actually read the words as written, and instead “reads in” something which isn’t there in order to further his own delusion. Not surprisingly, this is typical of the Progressive understanding of most of the Constitution.

If Moore’s own dishonesty isn’t enough to discredit the gun control argument by itself, perhaps the words of Faisal Moghul in the Canada Free Press can put the issue to rest [16]:

In this miasma of myth and disinformation, the debate surrounding gun control laws is primarily driven by preconceived notions impervious to facts, history or any iota of objective analysis. The notion that the state can reduce armed crime by strictly controlling the availability of guns to the general public, while superficially plausible, ignores the ample historical precedent and criminological data suggesting otherwise. The reality is that stricter gun control laws have never coincided with a reduction in armed crime.

The sinister attempt to associate private ownership of firearms with incidents of armed violence, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, furnishes the ideological camouflage for the state to disarm its populace by restricting their “last auxiliary right,” as Sir William Blackstone observed, of individual and collective self-defense against criminals and tyrannical governments.

…

Just like minimum wage laws do not help the poor, like mandatory minimum sentences do not lower drug crimes, like mass surveillance does not yield a safer society, and like bombing countries does not eliminate terrorism, gun bans do not reduce armed crime.

While guns can be dangerous, they are only as dangerous as the person using them.